Picture Post #57

Think about it, this squirrel story could get dark.

Think of it! Long, drawn out passages about poor Squirrel Nutkins starving to death, trying to eat tree bark, eventually even going that final step and eating another dead squirrel before giving it up and dying at the foot of the old oak tree.

The rats finding and defiling his body for kicks, while his kids watch.

Some moral crusading Badger trying to use the death of poor Nutkins to argue against the libertarian ways of the forest. That same badger being shot down in the street by the weasels for being a unionizing troublemaker. A poor mouse, being forced to sell her body for acorns, beholden to a frog pimp. If only Nutkins had made it through the winter, none of this need ever happened.

When I tell a story about a squirrel, we don't end with a party at Christopher Robin's. A shoot out, maybe.

Yeah, I go places sometimes. Dark places, places where the light never does seem to shine. I live in the naked forest, and I’ve heard all the tales.

I'm a satirist, I can make a story about a squirrel sick.

How about this, a squirrel looses his nuts, and he thinks he won't make it through the winter.

ONLY!

The catch is, he doesn't make it through the winter, and his death sends shock waves through the forest community. Bonny the Bat starts drinking heavily, and Sam the Snake takes advantage of the situation, buying up all the property before being shot down by Danny the Duck.

There can be an extended piece where, overcome with despair, Chirpy the Chipmunk throws herself off the top of her tree, only to discover she’s actually too light to reach terminal velocity and just gets banged up. She can dance with death, until Bert Bunny comes over and slaps some sense into her before admitting he loves her, just as Willie the Wolf descends on them both and rips them limb from limb.

The Death of Squirrel Nutkins! A 12 volume epic tale of struggle, failure, and the inevitable pall of death's presence.

You know? For kids!

My Problems With Game of Thrones

The other day, I got a comment to a post I made complaining about the three episodes of Game Of Thrones I'd "watched" a while back. The comment was everything you wish it wasn't. I've deleted the comment, the post and all, because I deleted the post on LJ a long time ago (I wasn't making my points clearly and I didn't want to argue about something that was just making me angry) and just forgot to delete the one on Wordpress.

You can read the rest, but you've only yourself to blame.

Book Review: Bone Idol

So, as you may know, I have some acquaintances in the publishing world. I’ve never pressed them to get my own work published, because I’m too shy to network properly, but that’s neither here nor there. That’s not what this story is about, this is a story about someone pressing against me into service.

I got an e-mail from a friend a little while ago. It goes as such.

Dear Weirdo: I do ever so love you and if only we could be together that would be wonderful, I ache for your kisses, even though I am inconveniently far away from you. While I’ve got you all nice and buttered up (would you make the appropriate joke about butter, you do it so much better than I) I need a favor. There is a young writer in our employ, by the name of Paige Turner, who needs a review. I’ve told my higher ups that you are a respected internet reviewer, mentioning the more than 100 reviews you’ve written for several blogs. Yes, darling, I know they’re for movies, but I didn’t tell them that. Here is the thing, young Paige is in need of a couple more reviews, so would you mind reading her book and letting the internet know what you think? I’d promise to fulfill some perverse sexual fantasy of yours the next time I see you, but I know you have none left, being the thoroughly debauched creature that you are. I will tell other people who’re wonderful though… please? The book is called Bone Idol and it can be found at Total-E-Bound.com. Included find the book, free of charge. Read it on your kindle, unless you're one of those horrible people who own a Nook. I suppose you can read it on that, but know that you are a sinner and a blasphemer.

Yours ect.
Captain B.J. Smethwick (in a white wine sauce with shallots, mushrooms and garlic) (Mrs.)



So what could I do? I took the file of Bone Idol, dropped it on my Nook, which is the better e-reader btw, and had a read.

Before that though, I went to the Total-E-Bound webside and had a look at what it said about Bone Idol...
Book one in the Past Perfect Series
Love stripped down to the bare bones.
1875. The Bone Wars. Dinosaur hunters will go to any lengths to make bigger, better discoveries—and to see their rivals broken. Henry is a man of science—precise, proper and achingly correct. When Albert arrives in his life in a storm of boyish enthusiasm, he’s torn between his loyalty to science and a new and troubling desire. Albert wants to protect his father, and fears Henry means to ruin his reputation in the bone-hunter world. Will he be ruled by his fear, or by his feelings? As they hunt for dinosaurs and explore their desire together, Henry and Albert find themselves digging up some secrets that could threaten their love—and their lives.

Okay, a book about digging up dinosaur bones, not a bad idea. Maybe they can get DNA out of them and clone some dinosaurs. That would be pretty awesome, right?

Well my friends, for a book about dinosaurs… its awfully romancey. I mean, the fact that this appears to be two guys doesn’t bother me. I’m neither here nor there on homosexual love stories. Everyone deserves to have their tale told. However… Well, allow me to show you the messages I exchanged with the Lady Authorette, one Paige Turner.

Me: I’ve been reading Bone Idol, even though I'm not much into romances of any kind, and I have a few questions.

Turner: You can skip the sex scenes if you want!

Me: That’s not the problem, I rarely skip sex scenes. It's not that, it's that so far the whole things is very... Romancey.

Turner: Beh. Stupid man.

Me: Now see here my good woman! While you’ve been practicing riding the internet side-saddle, I’ve read 60 or 75 pages of this book, and you have yet to include a single gun fight or car chase. Just some young man mooning over his boyfriend’s arms and legs and lovely face. I thought there were to be dinosaurs in this book, when do the raptors start eating people?

Turner: Um. There will be no dinosaurs actually attacking. It's because they’re so touched by the love story. The velociraptors were OVERCOME WITH EMOTION. Okay???

Me: WHAT?
...
...is this a kissing book?

Turner: WOT? Woz you expecting a dinosaur?

Me: Maybe. Look! Just because I thought this was a story where a man has sex with a triceratops, I don't see why I should have to be teased by you. It’s a simple mistake anyone can make. The word dinosaur pops up, and the male brain stops working. We can only really think about dinosaurs and breasts on most days anyway.

At that point, the conversation broke down because she deliberately failed it understand any of the points I was trying to make. I must say, I was wildly disappointed to find this simply to be a book about love and feelings and stuff, but I stuck with it all the way through and it’s actually not a terrible book. There is just a marked lack in the things I normally look for. I like zombies, velociraptors, car chases and gun fights.

Optimally, if you combine them, if you could have Zombie-Raptors driving Aston Martins and shooting Glocks at each other, that would be aces. Sadly, this book doesn’t contain that, but let’s talk about what it does contain.

Well, for a love story that descends into smut on a regular basis, it’s pretty good. The sex scenes are well written, the characters are fairly strong. There is actually a story beyond just the romance and sex, so that’s something. The lady authorette*, Ms Paige is a commendable writeresse, and can clearly sit side-saddle on a typewriter stool with some ease and grace. If you are a fan of M/M erotica, you will probably like this book, which is the first in the Past Perfect Series, the next installment of which is being prepped for publication now as I understand it. Give the book a read, you can get it for a song at the Total-E-Bound website. It arrived to me as a PDF, which my Nook had no problem with.

The only issue at hand is that my friend sent me a gay erotic novel, when I am a reader and writer of Hard Boiled detective fiction and satirical Urban Fantasy. However, I did my best and I hope you'll forgive my laxity.





*I went with authorette, because when I suggested Authoresse, I was told that was a real term. When I try to make up fake misogyny for a joke, I find the world has already made that term and I can’t even be sarcastic because the sarcastic term is real.

Picture Post #56

Twins in Death: Chapter One - Part Two

Twins in Death

A Tale of The Weirdo

By Brett N. Lashuay

 

 

Chapter One: The Ballad of Captain Scourge

 

 

March 10^th, 2002

11:45 a.m.

 

            The Weirdo should have had a better entrance to this story.

 

            It’s true, for someone with as long a history as he had, he could have come into the tale in a more dramatic way. This is a person who was shooting gangsters in the early thirties, had vanished for more than sixty years, and had reappeared three and a half years ago. In that time, he had run organized crime out of the city, hunted down an immortal serial killer and yet managed to be ignored by most major news organizations. He had powers, which seemed magical, and he traveled with people to whom the word wondrous could be used without exaggeration. All these things will be explained and expanded upon later.

 

            Bearing all that in mind, having him walk into an uptown restaurant is a fairly mundane and unimpressive way to enter this tale. Although it is fitting, since he rarely came to places like this. He was estimated to be worth something in the range of ten billion dollars as far as monetary wealth went, though this is only the educated guesses of a few people. As much money as he may have had, and as much as he may have been worth, something wouldn’t allow him to eat in places like this.

 

            He wasn’t the sort of person who felt he could eat in these sorts of places, something in his soul railed against them. He didn’t like the look of the yuppies, snarling at each other as they power lunched. The constant strain people had in these environments made him uncomfortable. They always had to watch themselves and each other for the tiniest sign of weakness. They had high power deals going on, the sort of things that could ruin companies and affect the lives of thousands. These were the sort of people who were important in the business world, and they were vicious with one another. He was not the sort to watch out for his place in any sort of hierarchy, and he didn’t like to lord his position over others, so it was pointless for him to be in a place like this.

 

            It’s been suggested that he was ashamed of his wealth. That he was like the tree huggers who claim to live off the land until you notice the checks from worried parents that come twice a month. The truth is very different, as it often is. The truth was that he had worked in the mines of Pennsylvania during the strike that caused Theodore Roosevelt to step into a labor dispute. He had walked with Watt Tyler and actually met Richard the Second. He had avenged Watt’s death at the hands of the mayor of London. He had carried two dying men off the field at Culloden, and stood in the trenches during the Great War. It has been said that when people like these claim they eat each other alive, he was heard to mutter that they probably only meant that metaphorically.

 

            It was because of things like this that the elitism of such places disturbed him. The room was filled with the false confidence of these men, who had only ever traded bonds or pork futures, talking about pressure as if they knew what it was. He knew what the real meaning of life and death was, and having those words bandied about over a two-cent drop in tech stocks disgusted him. He had stood in places where men like these would dry up and die within a few minutes, and he hated their sad attempts to appear important in a world that valued them less every second.

 

            Of course The Weirdo was the sort of person who could just walk into any place, but when he ate out, it was not generally at a place like this. However, she had asked, and there was nothing he could refuse her. Had she asked him to arrive naked and painted pink, he would have arrived so appointed. That is if he remembered. For someone with a photographic memory, things often slipped past it without a notice. He would remember later that she had asked him to wear a tie, but he had forgotten it.

 

             He entered the doors of the restaurant and scanned the room. It was a large but low ceilinged place, it felt confined and constricting. He didn’t like the low lighting effect that the place used either. It rather made one feel like they were eating in a cave and that they should all be wearing animal skins. While the primitive cave feeling might have appealed to the overfed business men, while they ate their over priced beef and drank over priced wine they knew nothing about, it didn’t help him as he tried to find her in the room. He didn’t really need his eyes to find her though. All he needed was to listen for her heart beat. He could tell where she was at all times it seemed. He was always drawn to her in a way. He moved past the mater' de who made some harrumphing noises as he went past. The Weirdo heard, and made a mental note of the harrumph, but paid it no mind. He was not here for some waiter. He was here for her.

 

            She was already waiting for him at the table when he arrived, looking resplendent in a simple light blue pantsuit. She looked at him and smiled as he came to the table, his heart leapt to see her smile. He sat with her at the table and gazed across the table lovingly at her. He couldn’t remember a moment when she didn’t amaze him, but she was especially lovely today. Her chestnut hair was tied back with a simple barrette, and her amazing royal blue eyes stared deeply into his. He smiled at her again and looked down at the table.

 

            His heart pattered, and in that moment a face came floating up in his mind. The face of a dead child, who would never grow up to be like the beautiful woman sitting at the table. A child he had failed to save. He pushed the face away, trying to ignore the onslaught of faces that would often come at these moments. Yet the entire event, he knew would have to play itself out in his head again. It would come complete with diagrams and the six different things he could have done to save her. This would always happen whenever he felt close to happiness.

 

            “You forgot to wear a tie.” She said, and the face vanished.

 

            In fact he was wearing a blue denim shirt, a t-shit under it and a pair of gray pants that looked like worn cotton. He was the only person in the room who was so attired, the rest of the room taken up as it was by lawyers and other suit wearing type people. The Weirdo did not normally wear suits, nor was he generally seen with people who did. In The Weirdo’s world, suits spoke of pretension, not power. The thug who wanted to prove he was in control of the situation wore a suit. Suits were what little men who were afraid to get their hands dirty wore to show what cowards they were. He made a special habit of wounding these sorts because he liked to see the look on their faces when he proved they were not in charge.

 

            “Yeah but I wore real pants.” He said showing her the leg of one trouser. “Not sweatpants.”

 

            “Yes you did.” She said, trying not to laugh.

 

            The Weirdo could dress up, she’d seen it, but he often forgot when they were going to a place that required him to change his clothes, or he would talk himself out of getting into a suit. He could be very persuasive at times. She often thought he could talk the devil into heaven, if only he would try.

 

            The waiter came over and looked down at him, looking disdainful as he could manage at The Weirdo. The Weirdo had seen, or at least heard him come, and she knew it. He could feel the tiniest change in the local magnetic field, generally around seven feet away from him. He could hear a pin drop on a carpet in the next room, and he could see things before they happened. The fact that he didn’t look up had told her he knew the man was there and was trying to annoy him.

 

            “I’m sorry sir.” He said. “But we require a jacket be worn here.”

 

            The Weirdo looked up at her and without moving his head, turned his eyes to look where the waiter was standing. She let her lips curl up in a grin, knowing he would at least be on his best behavior. His eyes looked back at her and then his head tilted slightly. The game was about to begin.

 

            The Weirdo turned and stood up; he was about half a foot shorter than the waiter, who was six foot three. This required that he look up at the waiter as he stared back, and what a stare it was. The Weirdo had a way of looking at people that made them uncomfortable, it was the sort of look elementary school principles and police officers and other authority figures learn before they can start work. Those stares however are pale imitations of the one currently being trained on the waiter, who was just trying to do his job. It was a stare that could move stones on its own, and yet it was almost friendly.

 

            “It’s the…ah, dress code you see?”

 

            “Oh?” The Weirdo asked brightly, fully aware that he could make something sound dumb by simply failing to react properly to it. He also knew that by waiting a sufficient time he could make the person babble like an idiot and get themselves more flustered, by just standing there.

 

            “Yes.” The waiter began to falter.

 

            There was a long pause, in which The Weirdo simply stared straight into the waiter’s eyes. He didn’t look annoyed, or angry, he didn’t roll his eyes around. He simply looked at the waiter as if trying to understand a Frenchman asking a complex Geometry question when he’d only had a year of German back in high school. He looked as if he was getting maybe every seventy-third word the man spoke.

 

            “I’m here to have lunch see?” The Weirdo said in friendly manner. “With this stunning woman, now surely since I’m only here for lunch, it’ll be okay right?”

 

            “Well.” The poor waiter wasn’t holding up well under the gaze.

 

            He could feel some sort of threat, even though one hadn’t been made. In fact, if the other people in the restaurant had been asked, they would have sworn The Weirdo was just standing there, smiling faintly. For the waiter though, it was like being in a room with a tiger. He knew that while it looked relaxed, he was dealing with a wild animal. A sort of mixture of paranoia and panic rose in the waiter and he felt that if he relented this one time everything would be all right.

 

            “I’m sure just this once.” The waiter said.

 

            And then The Weirdo smiled his warm and feeling smile. It was the smile that told you everything would be all right, if only you’d listen for a moment. He looked like the sort of man who could encourage a small band of soldiers to take over the Roman Empire. He looked exactly like the sort of person who could convince an army to ride across the country to overthrow a government, while being able to claim it was all someone else’s doing. He could have led the world by now, if only he’d had the wish. His only wish now though was to have lunch with her.

 

            “Thanks, yer a pal.” The Weirdo winked, turned and sat back down.

 

            The waiter could feel the gaze lift off him like a weight, as if a spotlight had suddenly been trained elsewhere. He felt somehow glad to be alive and thought that just maybe he should just call the rest of the day in sick. It wouldn’t be fair to think of this man as weak, it was just that being so near such a dangerous object had had its affect on him.

 

© 2012 Autumn Knight Productions